Empowering Girls to Be Bold Through Mentorship

This week, Grotto catches up with Sonja Breda from Girls Inc. — a national nonprofit that serves girls through summer and after-school programming. She shares the importance of mentorship and safe environments where the girls learn to take risks.

“Our mission is to inspire girls to be strong, smart, and bold,” she shares.

Video Transcript

Sonja Breda: My name is Sonja Breda. Girls Inc. is a national non-profit that serves roughly 150,000 girls each year through summer and after-school programming. Our mission is to inspire girls to be strong, smart, and bold. We do this for the Girls, Inc. experience, which is trusted adult-mentoring relationships, a safe all girls’ environment where girls can take risks, and programming that meets the needs of girls in the modern world. We also do advocacy to improve opportunities for girls and help them overcome barriers to success.

Sonja: I’ve always been really passionate about public policy, and women and girl’s issues. So I was really looking for an opportunity where I could be part of creating this positive change that could help create a safer world for girls. And that was what led me to Girls, Inc. Right now we’re actually engaging in this campaign called “Girls Too: Respect Starts Young,” and it’s really focused on sexual harassment and sexual violence in the lives of youth.

Sonja: We know that this behavior starts really young, and that if we can really get at the root cause, we’ll be able to create a safer world for girls and boys.